


Death and Destruction - Theodore

by unkissed



Series: Into the Heart of Darkness: A Collection of A/U Twisted Tales [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Asphyxiation, Death, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Forced Prostitution, M/M, Murder, Necrophilia, Non-Consensual Bondage, POV Second Person, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Slavery, Strangulation, Triggers, erotic asphyxiation, suffocation, unintentional murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:27:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2650343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unkissed/pseuds/unkissed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You were eight when you saw the face of Death and became enamored with its gruesome countenance.</p><p> </p><p>The first in a series of A/U twisted tales, in which Theodore Nott is obsessed with Death and Draco Malfoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death and Destruction - Theodore

**Author's Note:**

> Credits: Death belongs to Neil Gaiman. Rosaline belongs to Draco_Amante. 
> 
> Thank you to Draco_Amante, ColorfulStabwound, and Shan for inspiration, friendship, and support. Sorry I was so horrible to your babies. (Not so sorry…)
> 
> Please strongly consider the archive warnings and tags before proceeding to read this story.

You are eleven when you see your first thestral, pulling the carriages up to Hogwarts Castle. You are the only one in your entire class that can see them.  And you relish it like a rare gift bestowed upon you by the gods.  You feel incredibly special and proud, even though your young classmates are shocked by the fact that you can see them.

 

They challenge you to describe them in detail, perhaps because they don’t want to believe that you can see them, or maybe because they are secretly jealous. They cringe and shudder at your words, but you’ve no idea why.  What you have just described is a beautiful creature, more awe inspiring than any other animal known to wizard kind. 

 

Thestrals – they are the color of the sleek, moonless night, with wings like the cloak of Death itself and taciturn eyes like forbidden jewels set in the darkest untouched folds of the earth.  You will come to know them all like old friends and an unspoken trust will pass between you.  Each one will tell you its name in an inhuman language spoken directly to your mind, and at the start of every school year, you will speak those demonic names in inaudible whispers as you stroke their skeletal spines.

 

You can see thestrals because you have seen Death.  And you have a special relationship with thethestrals because you have a special relationship with Death. Really, it is a courtship more than a relationship - for now.  But that will change.  You will make sure of that.

 

~@~

 

You were eight when you saw the face of Death and became enamored with its gruesome countenance.

 

You were in the hayloft of the stables at Luckington Manor, your home on the English countryside.  The hayloft was one of your secret lairs – the one that was meant just for you, not so much because you wanted to keep your friends out, but because nobody ever wanted to follow you up there.  If we are being honest, there was only one person that would even have the opportunity – one person that you could really call a friend.  And Draco Malfoy would never indulge you there, in a dusty, smelly stable.

 

So you climbed up there to be alone.  Truly alone. Because even in your room with the door closed, there was always somebody ready to yank you out of your fantasy world, somebody to make you put down your poetry books in favor of lessons. In the hayloft, nobody could bother you. The soft noises of the horses hid your sounds and the large bales of straw hid your weedy, little form. You’d read your books until after nightfall under the light of a gas lamp, and then come down just in time to clean yourself up before supper.

 

On this particular night, your father had gone to Malfoy Manor for one of his meetings. You were supposed to accompany him so that you could play with Draco.  But you were deeply entrenched in _A Picture of Dorian Gray_ and you didn’t want to stop reading.  You told your father that you weren’t coming and he did not object. Your mother, however, was unaware that you’d stayed behind, which was fine by you.  It meant you could remain up in the hayloft until bedtime, reading your book.

 

You were entranced by a particularly gripping passage when a ruckus yanked you back into the real world.  Thoroughly annoyed, you peeked from behind the bale of hay you’d been leaning on to glance down in search of the offending culprit.  In one of the unused stalls, you saw your mother.  The hair that she normally kept in a neat chignon had fallen in voluminous waves of black silk to her bare shoulders.  Though her blouse was open, her chest was not bared, for a gentleman had taken it upon himself to cover her up quite determinately with his hands. This man was not your father. Even from behind, you knew this. Thaddeus Nott was an old geezer. And this was a man in his prime.

 

The man put his lips on your mother’s and she made a sound of alarm.  Perhaps it was the kiss that shocked her, or maybe it was the fact that he had hiked up her skirts in a swift motion.  You didn’t understand why this man, whom you did not know, had his hands all over your mother.  The way she whined and groaned made you think that his touch was unwelcome. But you were very naïve and still blissfully ignorant of the ways of lust.  Since he was not your father, you knew he had no right to be touching and kissing your mother and you thought that maybe he was forcing himself upon her.

 

You loved your mother dearly.  She was everything to you.  While your father was stern and cold, your mother was warm and nurturing.  You would protect her with your life. 

 

This situation she was in felt wrong to you.  You thought she was in danger and you felt incapable of defending her from the clutches of this very capable young man.  You were afraid that if you shouted at him, he’d just hurt your mother more – You know this because you’d tried this same approach when your father had smacked your mother across the face after a particularly nasty row. 

 

You were too young to possess a wand and you couldn’t perform wandless magic. You sat in the loft, helpless and afraid.  The man was now throwing himself against your mother on the straw-covered floor of the stable repeatedly, making her cry out as if she were in agony.  You panicked and tried to stop him with a distraction. You threw the gas lamp from the loft, hoping the crash would startle him.  But the glass shattered next to a pile of dry straw, which immediately caught fire.  The flames roared up, trapping your mother and the gentleman in the stable. 

 

You hadn’t known it, but an open bottle of whiskey had been upset and had soaked the straw, rendering it highly flammable in the moments before you’d thrown the lamp. It had happened in the minutes it had taken you to rouse from your Oscar-Wilde-induced-reverie to even notice that these secret lovers were there.

 

There were a lot of other things that you were unaware of.  Of course, you hadn’t known your mother had taken a lover and had made a cuckold out of your impotent father.  Though you didn’t explicitly know what rape was at the time, you had told yourself for many years that the man in the stable was there to hurt your mother.  You _had_ to tell yourself that so that you could live with what you’d done.

 

The flames rose fast and engulfed the screaming couple.  Their arms flailed in a gruesome dance, like the tongues of fire that consumed them.  As your mother burned, you saw her face – her melted and charred skin, and singed hair, and exposed bone. You saw the face of Death and it was not horrifying, but breathtaking.  Death wore your mother’s beautiful face and you knew you didn’t ever have to fear it.

 

 

In fact, you revered it.  You worshiped Death as you did the memory of your mother.  You saw Death all around you and you found beauty in it.  You’d go walking with your cat through the woods by your home to watch him kill voles and you would admire the lithe way the soft little creatures went limp.  You spent hours staring at Renaissance paintings, studying the rapturous poses of unclothed, dying martyrs in their final throes of holy agony. 

 

Not long after your mother passed, you found grace in the way your grandmother was slowly dying of pancreatic cancer, bleeding black blood from every orifice like dark wine seeping from a Dionysian vessel.  While everyone had turned away, you stayed by her side, holding her hand, smiling at her gaping mouth until long after she had gone, entranced by her hollow expression, while your emotionless family stood on deathwatch from the other side of the closed door.  Death was not cruel – _life_ had tortured your grandmother.  It was Death that granted her mercy and peace.

 

When you were a teenager, you learned that your father was a member of a secret order of wizards who venerated a man that sought to defy Death. And you knew this man to be evil and demented because he showed such blatant disrespect for that which you had held in such high esteem.  He had the foolish audacity to claim he had more power than Death, than that which had power over everything on earth.  You would never become a Death Eater, no matter how your father threatened you. Because you felt like you knew Death, and it was not to be balked at or used as a mascot for self-indulgent political crusades.

 

 

~@~

 

You are fifteen.  You’d known for quite some time that you were attracted to your dearest friend, Draco Malfoy. He’d been returning your subtle advances all year and you’re willing to bet that he won’t object if you cross that line beyond friendship and kiss him.  Just last week, he had slept in your bed, nestled in your arms, so you are certain that the feelings you have for him are mutual.

 

You’re on the great lawn of Malfoy Manor, on a blanket beneath a vast canopy of stars. But the brightest stars of all are the silver ones in Draco’s shining eyes.  He’s looking at you with so much want and desperation that you almost feel obligated to give him what he wants, which you assume is _you_.

 

So you take him gently by the back of the neck and you close the small distance that separated you.  When you press your lips to his, it is fire and electricity and magic and beauty.  And you devour him with all the desire in your soul. You don’t notice right away that he isn’t kissing you back.  But when you do realize that Draco is stiff and that his lips aren’t moving against yours, you don’t let it deter you.

 

You want him, and damn it, you are certain that he wants you, and you will give him what he’s too stupid to take even if you have to shove it down his throat. You roll him back onto the blanket and pin him down with the length of your body upon his.  You shackle his wrists with your fingers and kiss him hard, forcing your tongue between his pursed lips.  He whimpers in protest, but it’s half-arsed at best. He’s not even fighting you; he’s just lying there frozen. 

 

You pull back slightly to reprimand him for being so ridiculous, but he speaks as soon as his lips are free.  “Why’d you do that?” he asks, affronted, and the insulted expression on his face makes you want to punch him.

 

“Because you want it,” you say before diving in for another kiss.

 

This time he pushes you and you sit up, still perched on top of him. He glares up at you and whines petulantly, “You’re ruining everything, Theodore.”

 

His eyes are like knives that pierce through your soul and the pain of betrayal is unlike anything you’ve ever felt.  It even rivals the heartache you felt when your mother died. This pain melds with anger and courses through your body with fire.  You screw your eyes shut and fight the tears that threaten to spill forth. Your body seems to move on its own accord and when you open your eyes, you find your hands around Draco’s throat.

 

 _His_ fingers are around _your_ wrists now.  The look on his face changes from shock to panic and fear.  His eyes are wide and his face is flushed pink.  You imagine that this is the face Draco would make if you fucked him – when his virgin hole is breeched for the first time and sends a searing shock of pain all the way up his spine.  This thought has you instantly hard and your hips start to move in long, sinuous motions atop Draco’s lap.

 

You imagine being nestled inside him with your hands forming a loving collar around his neck and you squeeze tighter.  You smirk down upon the boy beneath you, and both of you are starkly aware that his life is quite literally in your hands.  Just a slight motion of your fingers, and you’d be sending him over to the other side – you could say the same about your hand around his cock and the parallel between sex and death is such a glorious revelation that it brings you close to orgasm.

 

You’re so high on lust and love and the thrill of this moment that Death itself appears like an epiphany.  You see Death in the dimming light of Draco’s eyes.  He writhes beneath you in vain attempts at wiggling free, and the erratic jolts of movement just serve to get you off.  You imagine fucking Draco’s lifeless body – his muscles twitching with the last bursts of neurologic activity, his lips blue, and his eyes devoid of light. You come hard inside your trousers and instinctively tighten your hands around Draco’s neck.

 

As he is silently, uselessly gasping for air, you are shuddering above him and moaning his name with rapturous adulation to your god, as if you are offering him up to Death as a sacrifice. 

 

And then you see something that startles you with such force that you find yourself on your back a good two feet away.  Your mother’s dead face had appeared on Draco’s head, just as you were about to squeeze the life out of him.  You manage to stand up unsteadily and stagger away as Draco rolls on the ground, gasping and coughing.

 

 

Needless to say, you and Draco pretend that night never happened and don’t speak to each other for the rest of your time at Hogwarts together. 

 

But what he doesn’t know is that, from this moment on, you will wank to the delicious image of Draco’s pale, naked body expiring elegantly in your arms as you quite literally fuck him to death.  And in your fantasy, you keep fucking him well past his last breath, until Death renders his tight flesh soft and pliant for you.  When you come, the Draco of your fantasies stares up at you, blank-eyed and slack-jawed, and he is the prettiest corpse you will ever see.

 

~@~

 

Sex and Death become synonymous for the rest of your teenage years, and well beyond.

 

In your sixth year of Hogwarts, a girl by the name of Rosaline Dolohov transfers from another school.  She reminds you of your mother, if only just superficially, with her dark hair, blue eyes, and aristocratic air.  Of course, you become obsessed with her, not just because she’s the new girl that everybody wants, but because you recognize a darkness in her that nobody else seems to notice. She gravitates to you, the brooding mysterious boy in the shadows, like a demon seeking out the dark. Just like your rare ability to see thestrals, you feel blessed to know Rosa like no one else knows her. It isn’t long before you wind up snogging behind the greenhouses.  Soon after that, she takes your virginity and thereafter you have rough, brutal sex every chance you get, in every secret corner of Hogwarts that you can find. Her viciousness rivals yours and some nights you wind up more cut up and bruised than she, but nevertheless sated and drunk on love and violence.

 

However, you are a passing amusement to Rosa.  You are just one in a long line of boys she’s charmed, fucked, and will soon discard. But you’re infatuated with her. You tell her that you love her. And because she is all about what’s bad for her, she indulges you and encourages your sick obsession. You spend a lot of time just watching her, staring hard enough to make her uneasy.  What she doesn’t know is that you are painting her in your mind. You are overlaying a shroud of Death upon every portrait you conjure in your head.

 

You’re a shitty artist, but you sketch pictures of her in your journal as she lounges on the common room sofa.  They are unassuming pictures.  When you go to bed at night, you embellish these pictures from the privacy of your curtained four-poster. You’re not sick – you just think Rosa would look so beautiful as a corpse.  You draw her in various poses of post-mortem – with her throat slashed open, with deep gouges in her wrists, with bruises in the shape of your fingertips around her neck, with a mortal head-wound between her empty eyes.

 

One evening, Rosa snatches your journal from you after a playful wrestle in the grass by the lake.  She flips through the pages and her smirk darkens when she comes upon those secret sketches.

 

“Do you want me dead, Theodore?” she says, with so much sinister amusement in her voice that it seems like she’s challenging you.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Rosa,” you scoff, though part of you knows you’re lying. “I just fancy drawing dead people. And you make a fucking sexy corpse.”

 

Under the light of the full moon, the darkness gleams in her eyes and she kisses you hard. You’re only mildly surprised when she palms your crotch.  This is Rosa, after all, and only she would get turned on by you calling her a _sexy corpse_.

 

She whispers hotly into your mouth, “Does thinking about killing me get you hard, Theodore?”

 

She clutches the outline of your stiffening length through your trousers and has you moaning against her lips, “Yeah.”

 

Then she chuckles deep and low, absent of humor and mirth, “You don’t have the balls, Theodore.”

 

That’s all you need to incite you into another one of your rage-fueled sexual romps. You clutch her wrists and pin her to the grass and it is so _déjà vu_ that it hurts, right down to the moment you have your hands around her throat.

 

But in this scene, unlike the one with Draco that you still replay in your fantasies, you actually get to be inside her.  And it is better than all of your fantasies.  She’s so fucking tight around your erection that you can feel her pulse on the inside, synchronized with the throbbing of her jugular vein against your palm. Instead of her hands trying to wrench yours from her neck, she’s clutching your backside, digging her vamp-red nails into your skin, spurning on your every thrust.

 

She’s pushing you to do it because she thinks you’re bluffing.  She thinks you’ll let go at just the right moment. She thinks you’re just playing with the orgasm-heightening effects of asphyxiation.  With every thrust you wordlessly tell her that she’s wrong, that you are completely capable of taking her life.  You fuck her so hard that it hurts you – you can only imagine how painful it is for her.  Lack of oxygen begins to take its toll and she starts to fade out of consciousness, still with a smug grin playing on her lips, doubting you until the very end.

 

Death is so close you can feel its cold fingertips ghosting on your back. You race towards it like you rush towards orgasm.  And just like that time with Draco, you see the face of Death again.  You’re not even startled, but frustrated, when your mother’s dead eyes glare at you through Rosa’s purple-pink face.  You let go in every way.  Your fingers loose their grip from Rosa’s neck, you come because you’re past the point of no return, and you collapse on top of her with a sob. You cry with breathy, quiet sobs and soak her chest with your tears as she gasps for much needed air

 

“I’m sorry,” you bemoan, “I love you.”  You repeat it over and over like it is penance.  You don’t know to whom you are paying it.  Perhaps it is to both Rosa and to your mother.  But if you were being honest with yourself, you’d know it is all for your mother. 

 

It is _all_ for her.

 

 

~@~

 

The Fates have a sick sense of humor.

 

Soon after you run away from home to escape the clutches of the Death Eaters during the summer before what should’ve been your last year at Hogwarts, you learn that Rosa’s female lover has murdered her in her sleep – suffocated by her own pillow. The story is all over The Daily Prophet, so scandalous that it preempts the usual Ministry propaganda on the front page.  Apparently, Rosa had come from a family of assassins and was not spared when each one was wiped out by the Death Eaters that could have been their targets.  And now Rosa’s personality all makes sense now. You wonder if she had been much older than sixteen – if her identity as a transfer student had just been a cover. You’ll never know who her target was, but you suspect it might have been Draco.  Unlike you, he did not escape the stain of the Dark Mark.

 

Even though you’ve fled far from England, you still think of Draco. You wonder about the atrocities he is being forced to commit in the name of the Dark Lord.  But more than that, you think about Draco as you jerk your cock at night and you see his dead, grey eyes behind your closed lids. You see his blue, emotionless face when you fuck your way across three continents.  You’re not so foolish now – you are a boy on the run with nobody following you and you want to keep it that way.  So you don’t dare try with strangers what you’d tried with Draco and Rosa, because the last thing you need is a warrant for your arrest. Though you still flirt with asphyxiation by way of fingers caressing the throats of your lovers as you screw them without mercy and without affection.

 

 

The war is over, but you’ve no reason to go back to England. You end up in New York, where you decide to plant roots, however shallow, and rent a flat in a bohemian neighborhood.

 

You’ve been exchanging letters with your friends back home since the fall-out of the Battle of Hogwarts had settled.  In their return missives, you find that war has rendered your friends useless shells of human beings.  Once the promising young stars of wizarding high society, your friends are now branded as the children of war criminals.  They’re social pariahs who no longer have a place in the wizarding world.  Lost and disenfranchised, with too much money and too much idle time, they struggle uselessly to find joy while the rest of the world celebrates victory over Voldemort.  They fill the indolent hours with cheap thrills that are bought at high prices. They are exactly where you are now, but on the other side of the ocean.

 

Pansy Parkinson comes to visit you, more out of lack of anything else to do than out of nostalgia.  What was supposed to be a weeklong visit, turns into months of excessive sex, excessive drugs, and utter destruction.  You ruin sheets and ruin each other because nobody fucks you like Pansy fucks you. She is downright vindictive when she rides your cock and it is _her_ hands that find their way to _your_ throat when she is close to orgasm.  And you discover for yourself that oxygen deprivation plus orgasm equals the most beautiful high you have ever felt, more euphoric than cocaine or Ecstasy.

 

Every time you fuck, you invite Death into a ménage a trois.  Soon, hands and fingers aren’t enough and you find other ways of seducing Death.  Neckties, scarves, rope, strings of pearls, bed sheets, belts are your improvisational props. When the novelty of using those implements fades, is when you really start to get creative and dangerously kinky.

 

You’re both high on coke, unbearably hot, and insatiably lustful one sweltering summer night and it seems like a great idea to fuck in the bath.  Water splashes out of the tub with every forceful thrust as you pound Pansy into the porcelain from behind.  Most of the water is on the floor of the bathroom by the time you’re close to climax, but there is just enough.  You’d once read that it only takes a few inches of water to drown a person – it didn’t make sense to you until now. 

 

Your fingers are tangled into the back of Pansy’s hair and you push her face down into the water when she tells you she’s close.  Your pace quickens as you rush toward a dramatic end and you are so caught up in your own bliss that you don’t realize that Pansy is plunging head-first towards her own absolute end.  You feel her pulsing around you as she comes and her euphoric moans are muffled by the bathwater, which bubbles from her face.  Your own orgasm strikes you hard like a wooden plank to the head and stars blank out your vision.  When you spill inside her, your hand remains clenched around her hair and her face is still in the water.

 

When you slide out of her, breathless and dizzy, she falls away limp like a fish at the bottom of the bathtub.  The warm feeling all over your body is immediately flushed away by a cold panic shooting up your spine. You pull her up by the shoulders and she feels like a wilted flower as you hold her tight, whispering, “Wake up, Pansy, wake up.”  You say it over and over again like a magical incantation.  When she doesn’t rouse, you shout at her as you smack her cheeks, but your words come out more like a woeful cry because the weight of what you’ve done starts to press heavily upon you.

 

You sit in the tub with her until both you and she and the water go cold, rocking her in your arms, still chanting _wake up, wake up_ in a hoarse, small voice.  It is dark by the time you come out of the tub and lay her on the bed. You dry her off, brush her hair, and fold her hands over her chest as if she is Snow White in death-like sleep. She is still so pretty. You daresay she is even more beautiful in death than in life – before, she was cruel, loud, and obnoxious, and now she is quiet and serene.  The tinge of blue beneath her translucent, white skin gives her an opalescent appearance. Her eyes are wide and glassy like a doll’s, with long, thick fans of lashes.  Her lips are like the petals of her namesake flower - soft and purple.

 

You admire her for a long time, reverently stroking her blank face with the back of your hand, and she doesn’t cease to stir emotions in you the way she did moments ago when she was still breathing.  Death wears Pansy’s face now and you are even more besotted than you’ve ever been. She seduces you with her eyes that are like interstellar space, beckoning you to dark realms, and you are powerless to do anything but give in to Death’s call.  Her limbs are so soft and pale and elegantly wilting as you fold them around your body.  You are wrapped up in a cold shroud as you nestle between her legs.  There is no resistance when you slide into her.

 

Sex had always been about violence to you.  But now, you are making love to a woman that has yielded everything to you. Pansy’s sacrifice is so beautiful that it makes your heart hurt.  It is the first time you’ve ever been so gentle and so careful, and as you slowly move in and out of her, you cry silently.  You cry because you want it to always be like this but you know it is fleeting. You cry because you know what you have to do to sustain this feeling, and it scares you.

 

You make love to Pansy until the water that had suffocated her spills from her parted lips, until you fill her with your semen and your sorrow, until you come crashing down hard from your cocaine high and realize you’ve just committed murder.

 

You cannot bring yourself to treat Pansy like a _thing_ , like a corpse to be disposed of like so much trash. She is still human to you, still beautiful and deserving of respect.  So you dress her in the frilly, pink nightdress that she wore to bed and you tuck her in for the last time, leaving a kiss on her blue lips before leaving New York.

 

By the time the neighbors make a shocking discovery in your flat, you are already a faceless, nameless boy in a sea of strangers, lost in North Africa. And you are blissfully unaware of the gruesomeness of that discovery, as her rotting, stinking carcass had to be scooped up from your bed in New York and dumped into a body bag.

 

~@~

 

The harsh reality of your crime catches up with you, if only within your own conscience. Nobody is looking for Pansy. Nobody knows who the dead girl in your flat is, for she’d left no identification.  The muggle police are looking for you, but all they have to go by is a badly drawn forensic sketch and a fake name.  Of course, you don’t know any of this.

 

You cover your tracks with postcards sent to your friends in England, telling them what a lovely time you and Pansy are having on your adventure through Africa. The last postcard you send, months after the murder, is from Morocco – you tell Blaise how devastated you are that Pansy has left you there and run off with a handsome French tourist.

 

You are tired of running.  You are tired of being paranoid everywhere you go, not venturing far from your cheap hotel rooms, hiding your face behind dark glasses and a head scarf.  You are just so fucking tired _period_. So you decide to lay low in Marrakesh for a while. 

 

It is a particularly hot day and you take relief from your sweltering hotel room in the shadows of a dingy café.  You don’t bother with the scarf today and just bury your face in a book of John Keats poems. You’re smoking a cigarette and drinking strong coffee when you are finally found.

 

But it is the last person on earth that you expect to find you. 

 

“Malfoy?”

 

You’re so shocked that you wonder if it is not a heat induced mirage of Draco Malfoy that stands before you.  He is leaps and bounds more elegant and gorgeous than the snotty teenage Death Eater you left behind years ago.  He is refined and regal in his white linen suit and neat, powder blue tie with dragon hide gloves to match.  You marvel at his remarkable lack of sweat and his cool demeanor.

 

“Hello, Theodore,” he drawls smoothly with a smug little grin that means trouble.

 

He knows. Somehow, that bastard knows what you’ve done.  You don’t know how he found you, and you don’t know why he’s here, but it can’t be for a reconciliatory reunion. You had abandoned your wand when you ran from home as a teenager, afraid that your magic would be traced – right now, you dearly wish you’d kept it.

 

One of Draco’s leather-gloved hands slips into his pocket and you swallow hard.   Though you sit, frozen in your seat, your eyes flit around frantically for an escape route. You regret sitting in the corner now, for you’ve no place to run.  You flinch as he pulls something from the inside pocket of his blazer and he holds it between two fingers like a cigarette when he hands it to you. It is the last postcard you’d sent to Blaise.  You stare at it as if it will hold more answers for you.

 

“I must say, I thought you were smarter than this,” says Draco with his signature superior air.  “Maybe you thought you were being clever by sending all those postcards to Blaise and Daphne, but they brought me right to you.”  He reaches toward you and you flinch again, which pulls a small, closed-lipped chuckle from Draco as he takes the cigarette that had been wedged above your ear for later use. “Relax, Theodore – I don’t want to hurt you.  I’m not one to make a scene in such a public setting.”

 

But it gives you little comfort.  The way he holds the cigarette between his lips would make your pulse race, had your heart not already been beating out of your chest.  You pull your Zippo lighter from your shirt pocket, not so much out of courtesy, but to show Draco that you are not entirely unarmed. You flick it open and he leans down to light his stolen cigarette.  Inside the panic of your cluttered mind, you see Draco’s face going up in flames – his nearly translucent eyebrows disintegrating instantly and his pale features turning a sick red as they burn, looking just like your mother’s face when she died. It’s all in your head, but you find some reassurance in the fact that you could defend yourself should the need arise.

 

“Shall we go, then?” Draco asks, as casually as if he’s picking you up for a date.

 

You sit back in your chair and cross your arms like a petulant child. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

 

He sighs as if he’s terribly inconvenienced and mumbles, more to himself than to you, “Of course, you’re going to make this more difficult than it has to be.” He takes a deep drag off the cigarette and blows a great plume of smoke above his perfectly coiffed hair before flicking away the barely-smoked fag.  He pierces you with grave, silver eyes as he declares, sounding rather official, “Theodore Eridan Nott, you are wanted by the Ministry of Magic in connection with the murder of Pansy Parkinson.”

 

Before he can say more, you leap out of your seat in an attempt to run, but Draco moves faster than you ever knew he could and ensnares your wrist in a muggle handcuff. He pushes you face-first into a wall and pins your arms behind your back to attach the other handcuff.

 

“You just had to make a scene, hm?  Ever the drama queen,” he whispers behind your ear, never losing his cool. “You’re going to let me take you out of here quietly, and I’ll spare you excruciating pain, alright?” You daresay he sounds downright seductive, but you’re far too alarmed to be aroused by the heat of his words and the command of his fingers digging into the back of your neck.

 

You give a stiff nod of assent and he leads you out of the café with one hand clamped on your shoulder. You hold your head high because you won’t be a common criminal, and you buck the condemning stares of strangers with your pride alone.

 

He brings you into the privacy of a dark alley before transporting you by magic. You find yourself in a hotel room that looks much like the ones you’ve been hopping between throughout Africa, with sparse, rickety furniture, mosquito netting around the bed, and dingy tile floors.

 

He sits you down on the saggy mattress, not gently, and you spit, “What daft Ministry monkey made an ex-Death Eater a DMLE officer?”

 

He laughs condescendingly.  “You think the Department of Magical Law Enforcement would waste time and precious manpower to apprehend you?  You think you’re special?” he scoffs, “Aurors and officers have their hands full rounding up all of Voldemort’s supporters who fled the country.  You’re a low priority.  Personally, I think the Ministry might actually be grateful that you rid the planet of another useless Death Eater spawn. I’d shake your hand for killing Pansy Parkinson.”  He glances dramatically behind you at your bound hands and smirks so smugly that you want to head-butt him.  “But you’re rather tied up at the moment.”

 

He leans down, hovering menacingly over you, and splays his hands on your thighs. Maybe there’s a glimmer of desire in his eyes when the dragon hide leather of his gloves moves slowly over your jeans, creating warm friction.  But you can’t be sure.  There’s definitely something dark and mysterious about his stare.

 

“Still, murder is murder and can not go unpunished,” he says with a feigned sad sigh. “The DMLE can’t afford to send an officer to apprehend you, but there is a warrant for your arrest.  And Mrs. Parkinson put a bounty on your pretty head to bring you into custody.” He hooks a finger under your chin and tilts your head up.

 

You laugh in his face because you can’t help it. “You’re a bounty hunter, Malfoy?” you say with amused disbelief, “Merlin, I never thought you’d deign yourself to wallow among the working-class.  But I suppose you’d bankrupt your vaults and suck the Ministry’s proverbial cock to keep yourself out of Azkaban.  And my guess is that your designer suit was not paid for with Malfoy gold.”

 

He grits his teeth and growls lowly, “I’d let the Minister for Magic fuck me hard enough to make me shit blood if it meant I’d never have to go back to Azkaban – five weeks was more than enough torture to scar me irreparably.” He speaks quietly, almost maniacally, “Imagine serving a life sentence there, Theodore. Imagine the constant cold, so deep that it makes your bones ache.  Imagine the darkness and solitude so complete that it drives you certifiably mad. Imagine the soul crushing anguish killing you so slowly that you beg for death.”  His predatory hands slide along your thighs and his growl returns to a smooth drawl. “The question you should be asking yourself is not what _I_ had to do to get released from prison, but what _you_ would do to keep yourself out of Azkaban.”

 

He straightens to divest himself of his blazer and sets it down neatly. The streaks of sunlight filtering between the slats of the window blinds glint off his diamond cufflinks as he removes them and slips them into the pocket of his trousers.  He rolls up his sleeves to his elbow, and the fact that he keeps his dragon hide gloves on makes you nervous.

 

“Let’s weigh our options, shall we?”  He gracefully straddles you on the edge of the bed and nests comfortably there, smirking down on you.  In more favorable circumstances, you’d be thrilled to have Draco subtly grinding on your lap. Your cock still manages to stir in your jeans despite everything because, let’s face it, this is still the man that has haunted your sexual fantasies for years and he is more fit than ever.

 

You hazard a cheeky grin.  “I’d be more amenable to discussion if my hands were free,” you say.

 

“Nice try, Nott,” Draco replies, chuckling as if this is a playful game between lovers. He pushes on your shoulder with more force than you ever knew he had and you fall back on the bed. Your own bound hands and the metal of the cuffs dig into the base of your spine.  The extra weight of Draco’s body on yours just exacerbates the discomfort. 

 

From his back pocket, he produces his wand.  Draco is not gentle, nor is he careful, when he swiftly slices open your shirt from collar to hem with the tip of the wand and a whispered incantation. You shiver with fear, paralyzed with a sense of helplessness.  You wish you’d set him on fire in the café like you fantasized about.  Your skin splits shallowly where the wand tip had touched too firmly, and the crimson cuts stand out starkly against your pale skin. Small rivulets of blood seep from the cuts and streak across your flesh like red ink on parchment. 

 

As he peels your shirt away, like skinning a fish, he muses with a smirk, “You’d make a beautiful canvas upon which to paint.”  His gloved fingers smear the blood on your skin as his hands splay across your chest.

 

And now you recognize that mysterious glimmer you’d seen in his eyes. It is madness. Draco’s short stint in Azkaban has quite possibly driven him insane.

 

“Are you going to kill me, Malfoy?” you ask, and as soon as the question leaves your mouth, you realize that you’re actually not afraid to die.  You’ve never feared Death.  What scares you more is being overpowered by another.  You’ve no idea what Draco intends to do to you, and your complete loss of control over the situation is what has you shaking.

 

“I’m not sure,” he answers too casually for your liking.  “I’m trying to figure out if you are worth more dead or alive.” His eyes rake over your body, appraising every inch of you, as if cataloguing each curve and line and assessing your value.

 

“Is it worth going back to Azkaban?” you ask facetiously.

 

He laughs, patronizing you.  “Oh my dear Theodore.  You’ve no idea what sort of license I’m afforded in my line of work.  And as it stands, the price on your head is fixed. I’ll be paid the same whether I bring you back to England in a body bag or in handcuffs.”

 

“I’m sure you’ll find I’m a lot easier to transport walking on my own volition rather than hauling, quite literally, dead weight,” you reason with him.

 

“This is true, but dealing with your smart mouth might not be worth the trouble of keeping you alive.”  He tilts his head and taps his gloved finger on his lips thoughtfully.  “I wonder if I could make even more than your bounty if you worked for me,” he ponders.

 

“I think I can prove to you that I’m capable,” you say.

 

His smirk darkens and the madness in his eyes sparkles like electricity. He leans down and whispers hotly with his lips hovering over yours, “Oh, I bet you can.”  If you really wanted to, and part of you does, you could kiss him, but he is just out of reach.

 

He moves southward along your body, leaving wet kisses along your chest. Your skin burns with the heat of his mouth and the sting of the lacerations.  His lips come away blood-smeared and he looks deliciously psychotic as his smile slowly spreads.  It is the last thing you see before a bright flash of light and then black nothingness.

 

 

~@~

 

It is a slow return to consciousness.  First, you feel the stifling heat of the room, and the slick sheen of sweat pasting the front of your body to the threadbare sheets of the bed. You realize that your clothes are gone.  Next you feel a dull ache in your shoulders and you find your wrists are now handcuffed to the headboard, effectively splaying your arms out above your head. The inside of your mouth is like sand. Everything about you feels sluggish in this room that is like a clay oven, baking you alive.

 

“Malfoy?” you call out hoarsely, and it hurts your throat to say one word.

 

You pry open your heavy eyelids to find that you are alone as far as you can see (which isn’t very far at all).  After a long silence, you assume that your assessment had been correct. But, from somewhere at the opposite side of the room, you hear the rustling sound of fabric brushing against fabric and you realize that you are actually not alone.  Then you smell smoke – you’d recognize the subtle nuances of the scent of your exact brand of cigarette from a mile away. That scent alone makes your nerves twitch with need.  You must have been unconscious for quite some time, for your craving for nicotine is dire, perhaps even trumping your requirement for water.

 

“So you’ve decided I’m worth more alive,” you hazard to guess.

 

You hear a faint crackle of burning tobacco and paper, followed by a slow exhale a few seconds later.  But you don’t get an answer. Now that you know you’re not alone in the room, you feel dread in the pit of your stomach – you are naked and prostrate, but this adds very little to your sense of vulnerability, for the fact that you’re shackled to the bed makes you feel more exposed and helpless than you’ve ever been before.

 

It doesn’t help that minutes go by without a word uttered by the other inhabitant of the room. It is uncertain that it’s Draco, but his penchant for stealing your cigarettes leaves you no reason to assume otherwise.

 

There’s a soft, irregular knock at the door. 

 

“Just a minute.”

 

And now you know that it is indeed Draco in the room with you.  He sounds calm and not the least bit alarmed that somebody is on the other side of the door when you’re naked and chained to the bed inside the room.

 

In a few click-clacking footsteps across the tile floor, Draco is upon you, hissing maliciously behind your ear.  “Have a good day at work, darling.”  He nips harshly at your earlobe.  The unexpectedness of it distracts you enough that you don’t have time to take a breath before he stuffs your mouth with some sort of cloth and ties it behind your head. It tastes of starched fabric, sweat, and the bitterness of cologne, and you wonder if he’s gagged you with his own necktie.

 

You shout uselessly through the fabric, which stifles your sounds of panic more than silk normally would, leading you to believe that Draco has charmed it as such. The heels of his expensive shoes click swiftly along the tile.  The door unlocks loudly and the hinges creak just a fraction.

 

“Money upfront,” says Draco, all business-like with no time for nonsense.

 

“Do I not get to see first?  What if I don’t like?” asks a man with a very thick, unrecognizable, foreign accent.

 

“I am offering you exactly what I had promised in our previous discussion,” says Draco, sounding slightly affronted, “You get the goods as is.  But I assure you, it’s worth it.”

 

“Seventy-five hundred Dirhams, yes?” the man confirms.  “It’s all here in cash.  Plus the five-hundred Dirhams security deposit.”

 

“Come inside and have a drink while I count it,” says Draco.

 

You’d scream louder, but you can’t waste the energy.  You listen carefully, trying to assess what’s going on unseen behind you. Every sound makes your heart beat faster with tense anticipation - The creaking of rusty hinges. The closing of the door. More footsteps. A stranger’s soft, pleased chuckle.   The scrape of a chair across tile. The clink of glass against glass and the pouring of liquid.   The rustling sound of paper currency.  With each passing second, you begin to understand that this transaction is taking place over _you_ , and you hyperventilate through your nose as you try to discern for what purpose Draco has just sold you.

 

“I’ll be back in one hour,” he says, “I’m in the room next door.  If I find that you’ve caused irreparable damage, I shall retain the security deposit.”  His shoes click across the floor, away from you, and you actually wish he were not leaving you alone with an unseen stranger.  “I’d prefer that you use a condom, but I’ll leave that up to your discretion.”

 

The door closes and the lock clicks into place with the finality of a death sentence. You heave muffled sobs of despair and inwardly curse Draco for his utter betrayal.  Your eyes blur behind tears, not that you can really see anything anyway.  You hear heavy breathing and the rustle of clothes coming undone.  The man smells of too much expensive cologne that had been applied in excess to mask the stench of sweat, however ineffectively, not that you smell any better – you likely smell worse, bathed in fear-tinged perspiration.

 

The man doesn’t talk, doesn’t even acknowledge you as a person.  You are a thing.  A commodity.  A receptacle to be used. You have never felt so inhuman before. You clench every muscle, as if that will somehow defend you against the advances of this stranger. He advances slowly and it is the worst torture, drawing out your dread and anticipation. A hand caresses the back of your thigh with fingers that have never known toil – thick, heavy, fingers that trace the furrow of your arse.  You sob louder, tumbling down into despair, as the inevitable washes over you. He spreads you with those fat fingers and spits to coat your exposed hole. 

 

You have fucked countless people before – men and women and in-between, some of them had been nameless strangers you’d picked up at clubs, some of them you’d spent time with, some of them you’d reluctantly given in to for lack of a good excuse not to fuck.  But it has never been like this – so faceless and anonymous and completely against your will. And nobody has ever had the privilege of entering you this way.  To this man, your virgin arse is worth eight thousand Dirhams, which is a formidable amount of cash.  But to you, it is priceless. To be fucked is to be owned, and you have never belonged to anyone - you had wanted to keep it that way.

 

When the stranger begins, you immediately understand why Draco took a security deposit to safeguard his property.  The stranger doesn’t just fuck you; he absolutely destroys you. After an hour, you are covered in semen, bruises, teeth marks, welts, and abrasions.  You feel like you’ve been pried open from behind with a crowbar and hollowed out with a broom handle. 

 

Sometime during your brutal assault, you’d let your mind go to another place, and the animal sounds of a stranger’s carnal growls faded into a dull buzzing in your ear. And inside the dark spaces of your mind, you heard voices, none of which were your own.  You heard the voices of the dead, whispering unintelligible things to you.  You let the voices lead you deeper and deeper into your own mind to escape the horror of what was happening to your body.

 

You think the ordeal is over when Draco returns to assess the damage an hour later. He insists on keeping half of the security deposit, much to the stranger’s muttered dismay. From the way your body feels, like wet pulp, you think Draco could have retained the entire five hundred.

 

But apparently, there is more of your body left to capitalize upon. You have maybe fifteen minutes to recuperate, still handcuffed to the bed, before there is another knock at the door. Another five hundred Dirhams is exchanged as you protest soundlessly into the enchanted gag until your already-sore throat feels like raw, shredded membranes.  This time you’re flipped onto your back and you wish your ability to see all that transpired hadn’t been returned to you.  A lecherous old man wearing a very bad hairpiece and an outdated suit sucks you off, and thanks (or no thanks) to Draco’s magic, you actually get hard and orgasm, though there is absolutely no pleasure in it. The entire time your skin crawls and you feel like you’re being swallowed up by a slimy, teeming mass of maggots.

 

In the end, you are completely broken down.  You wonder if you’re still human.  You’ve no strength or clarity of mind enough to fight when Draco removes the handcuffs and leads you to the washroom where he has drawn a bath.  You dry-heave on the bathroom floor as Draco holds you firmly by the arms, but nothing comes up but bile.

 

Draco guides you into the tub.  No words are exchanged.  Not even a sarcastic remark.  He silently washes your body and you feel like a child, which is leaps and bounds better than feeling like _Nothing._   He surprises you with his nurturing hands, gently scrubbing away the sex and grime.  And you welcome every touch despite yourself and despite what he has done to you. Because you’re desperate for comfort, for tenderness, for kindness after being so brutally used up.

 

He dries you off and puts you into bed.  You fold up your weary body into a fetal position.  He lays down beside you and curls himself around you from behind, and you sob quietly because you can’t understand why he is doing this to you – why he has traded you like a commodity one moment and is treating you like a cherished lover the next.

 

You fall asleep to Draco’s rhythmic, warm, breath against the back of your neck. Your sleep is fraught with terrible nightmares and you jolt awake in the middle of the night to find that one wrist is handcuffed to the bed.  A naked body stirs beside you and Draco’s arm finds it’s way back around your middle. He hooks a leg around yours and snuggles up close.

 

He nestles his face against you and mumbles softly, “You awake?” 

 

If it were not for the handcuffs, this scene would look everything like two lovers rousing in the middle of the night.  This fact makes your chest ache.  Perhaps in another life, you _would_ be lovers, sharing a quiet moment on a warm night in Morocco.  Certainly you had dreamed of nights like this, when you were fifteen and infatuated with your best friend. Yes, your _best friend_ – your heart hurts to think about what Draco once was to you.

 

“Depends,” you mutter, your voice cracked dry and wrought with impending tears.

 

He chuckles softly, you daresay even fondly.  When he kisses your sore shoulder, the tears roll down your cheek silently. It baffles you how Draco could break you so utterly and pretend to put you back together again. His hands caress your arms, as if trying to erase the bruises and the lingering pain.

 

You’re so desperate to be whole again, to feel safe, to be loved, that it is not entirely unwelcome when you feel his arousal stirring against you.  You don’t even flinch when his fingers find your cock and curl nimbly around it.  It doesn’t take much for you to succumb to his touch – as it is, you’ve no fight left in you. Besides, this is still Draco Malfoy and you’ve wanted him for so long.

 

He is sinuous marble and moonlight when he straddles you.  He is smooth skin and lithe muscle and even more exquisite than the Draco of your dreams.  Not even the dark stain on his left forearm could detract from his beauty, not even the madness in his silver eyes could make you recoil.

 

Your free hand finds his hip as he fits himself perfectly upon you and you both go together so seamlessly that it’s like you were made for each other. He rides you slow and sensuously and makes you forget the myriad of ways that he hurt you.  He leans down to hover above you and your eyes meet. And there, you feel your dark souls connecting.  For every evil he has committed, you have done far worse, and you believe that you and Draco could be the most wonderful pair of deviants that ever crawled out of Hell. You are so wrapped up in him and aching for more.  You curl your fingers around the back of his neck and he doesn’t stop you until you try to pull him down for a kiss. 

 

“No,” he says quietly as he turns his face and unhooks your hand from his neck.

 

And that’s when the proverbial spell breaks.  You realize that this is no different from the vile acts that occurred on this bed, hours before.  Draco is using you every bit as much as those men had used you.

 

The illusion of love bursts into flames and you feel the fire coursing through your veins. You are even more furious now than the first time Draco rejected your kiss so many years ago. You hook him around the neck with your arm and manage to flip him over as your tethered arm twists in the handcuff.

 

Draco laughs, winded but amused.  “You got me right where you want me, hm?”  His legs tighten around your torso and his stormy, grey stare is unwavering. “Do your worst, Theodore.” His hips curl against you, sending a delicious thrill through your lap.  “I want to feel the way they made you feel,” he drawls, seducing you more than challenging you.

 

With more freedom of motion, you maneuver your bodies into position, with his ankles resting on your shoulders.  You fuck him into the mattress with spite and fury, hungry for his pain. But Draco just smirks at you stoically as if you’re not plowing through him.  He doesn’t even cry out.  He is so unaffected that it infuriates you.

 

It takes a split second for you to regain control, in the time it takes for your hand to clamp around his throat.  The way Draco keeps smiling makes you wonder if you are playing directly into every one of his dark whims.  He holds your wrist, but does little to pry your fingers off his neck.  You mirror his smirk and you slow your hips. You want to savor this moment – the moment that you both realize that you want the inevitable to happen.

 

Maybe he’s been dreaming of this moment ever since you were both fifteen. Maybe the sick fantasy had haunted him exactly the way it had haunted you.

 

The voices in your mind return and become clearer with each thrust into Draco’s delightfully tight body.  You hear the voices whispering spitefully like hissing, angry serpents roiling inside your head. They whisper in the voices of your mother, of Rosaline, of Pansy.  They are the voices of the dead, calling for Draco to join their ranks.

 

As your fingers squeeze tighter, your conviction strengthens.  No longer do you have anything holding you back from doing exactly what you’ve wanted to do ever since that fateful night at Malfoy Manor. It feels like the easiest, most natural thing to do.

 

It takes remarkably little effort to strangle such a formidable young man such as Draco. His lips are blue by the time your seed is spilling into him.  When you release his throat, you lean down to kiss his cyanotic mouth, and the absence of even the faintest bit of breath confirms your success.  You kiss his gaping dead mouth the way you’ve always wanted to, letting your tongue slide against his.

 

He tastes acridly bitter and his breath smells of almonds and apples. You hardly have time to ponder this unusual mélange before your tongue feels fat and swollen inside your mouth. Your throat closes as if phantom fingers are strangling you, and your hand instinctively goes to your neck to free it from the invisible binds.  The more you uselessly gasp for air, the more your airways constrict, the more you panic and struggle to breathe.  Bright stars flash in your eyes as you search the room for a culprit or a savior. On the bedside table are several potion bottles. 

 

When everything clicks into place in your frenzied mind, you only have a second to smile with faint amusement before the voices of your mother and Rosaline and Pansy and Draco call out to you, as your world goes completely black.

 

~@~

 

“I see why you didn’t want me to kiss you,” you say, nestled beside Draco upon a bed of immaculately white sheets.

 

“It’s not that I didn’t want you to kiss me,” he replies, tucking a stray lock of black fringe behind your ear.  “I needed you to kiss me at just the right moment.”  He smiles and kisses you wetly on the mouth.

 

“Let me guess. You ingested _lycopodia_ before lacing your mouth with _aconitum_ ,” you say.

 

“Close. _Bryopsidia_ is actually the antidote to _aconitum_ ,” he corrects you, perhaps a bit smugly.

 

You slip a ghostly leg between his to part his thighs and his deathly white limbs splay open for you.  “Clever motherfucker,” you say fondly with a cheeky grin.

 

When you slide into Draco, there is no resistance.  When he bucks against you with a soft, pleased moan, he also meets none. You make love to him slowly with both hands curled around his neck, and you can see the swell of his Adam’s apple through your translucent fingers.

 

Every day, of every year for fathomless years to come, you will love Draco to death, condemned to kill each other over and over again for eternity.

 

 

~@~

 

Draco was eighteen when he saw the face of Death.

 

He was rotting away in a cold, damp cell in Azkaban, screaming for Death to take him. And when Death came, she appeared as a woman with skin like the smooth, white wings of a dove and hair the color of the void within a black hole.  Her eyes were pleasingly round, lined heavily with kohl, as black as the color of her pretty mouth.  She wore remarkably muggle clothes, all black fabrics of course, and carried a little parasol with her small, lace gloved hands.

 

“Are you here for me?” asked Draco, clamping his shaking hands desperately around Death’s ankle.

 

Death giggled and smiled down on him.  “Well, I’m here because you called, but I’m not going to take you with me.”

 

Draco sobbed and begged Death, “Please.”

 

Death sighed as she pet his matted hair fondly.  “I’m sorry, but it is not your time, Draco Malfoy.” 

 

Draco gazed up at Death and wiped away his tears, smearing dirt on his face with his dingy shirtsleeve.  “Can you tell me when it will be my time to go?”

 

“I’m afraid it is not my place to tell you that, Draco Malfoy,” said Death, not unkindly, “That question should be asked of my brother, Destiny. But unfortunately, he rarely heeds the call of mortals.”

 

“Is there nothing you can do for me to ease my suffering?” Draco beseeched.

 

Death crouched down and gently took Draco’s face in her hands to gaze at him sympathetically. “It is not my job to give, Draco Malfoy. It is my job to take. And as I’ve told you, I can not take you with me until your life is truly at its end.”

 

Draco began to cry again, whimpering softly like a hurt little boy. Death took pity upon this lost, beautiful child, but could offer very little.  “You may ask of me two more questions, Draco Malfoy.  I can not promise that I will be able to answer them, but I will do my best.”

 

Draco calmed down enough to ponder – to truly think long and hard about his questions. Death waited patiently, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the prison cell, twirling the parasol on her shoulder.

 

After several minutes, he spoke, and Death perked up, eager to field the boy’s question.

 

“Is there a Hell?” he asked, blinking with glassy, silver eyes.

 

Death shrugged. “There’s something like Hell. It isn’t the place that mortals have written about, with fire and torture and grotesque demons. But there is a place where I must take people to work through their _personal_ demons.  Hell is where you face the ugliest parts of yourself and come to terms with them. Most people can’t. And so they stay there for eons before moving on – and _that_ is the true torture of Hell – reliving the worst things you’ve ever done, over and over again.”

 

Draco bit his lip thoughtfully and nodded.  After another long pause, he asked his next question.  “What does somebody have to do to wind up in Hell?”

 

“Are you trying to make a reservation, Draco Malfoy?” Death joked with a quirked inky eyebrow and a twist of her black lips.

 

“I just want to figure out where I’m going.  And I know you can’t tell me.  So…,” Draco shrugged with a small apologetic smile.

 

Death returned his smile.  “You’re a clever one, Draco Malfoy. And I will offer you this. There are three ways that will ensure one’s ticket to Hell.”  Death counted off each one on a lacy finger.  “Murder – that’s pretty obvious.  Taking advantage of the innocent for one’s own personal gain.  Betraying the person you love the most out of selfishness, or pride.  There are many ways that people wind up in Hell, but those are the three biggies.”

 

Draco took a deep, cleansing breath, seemingly content with the answers. And when Death kissed him on the forehead and ruffled his hair with a small giggle, he felt marginally better about his current situation.  Though the actions that had landed him in prison were reprehensible, he’d not done any of the things that Death had mentioned, as far as he knew. And if his crimes were not horrible enough to warrant a stay in Hell, surely they would not keep him in Azkaban for long.

 

“See you when I see you,” said Death, winking at Draco before disappearing into the shadows.

 

 


End file.
